SARTRE ON FRENCH ANTI-SEMITISM: "An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, translated from the French by George J. Becker, with a new preface by Michael Walzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1995) (Reading Walzer "Preface" is critical. Sartre "produced a philosophical speculation variously supported by anecdotes and personal observations." "The result, however, is a powerfully coherent argument that demonstrates how theoretical sophistication and practical ignorance can, sometimes, usefully combine There is much to criticize in the essay . . . " "But Sartre's book should not be read as a piece of social science or even (as I have described it) as a philosophical speculations. His best work in the 1940s was in drama . . . , and Anti-Semite and Jew is a Marxist/existential morality play, whose characters are produced by their dramatic interactions . . . " Id. at vi-vii. "Characteristically, Sartre, who visited the United States in 1945 and wrote The Respectful Prostitute immediately after, saw in American pluralism only oppression and hatred: racism was the anti-Semitism of the new world. He was not entirely wrong, not them, not now. The (relative) success of religious toleration in breaking the link between pluralism and conflict has not yet been repeated for race and ethnicity. But there seems no good reason not to try to repeat it, given the value that people attach to their identity and culture." Id. at xxiii.).